Hey Peter; Don't know about your bench mounted variable power supply. For your laptop power supply and battery problem check out this link http://www.try-computing.com/docking.htm it is a generic docking station that can be used on many different laptops. But as for the external CDRW you can build one yourself with a external drive bay and any cdrw of your choice (preferably a plextor of some kind), I build them all the time for use on the laptops where I work. As for your forensic workstations a Athlon CPU 1.4 Ghz $205 can., 512 MB DDR $120 can., MSI K7T266 Motherboard $179 can. and a IBM Deskstar 75GXP 7200 rpm 20 GB harddrive $149 can. are a far more Powerful and economical way to go. And if you want redundancy as well as speed get ATA 100 RAID on the motherboard, this provides RAID 0,1 and has an excellent cost to performance ratio too. All the other components are top choices. Oh and a DVD I would say the Pioneer 16X slot load is still the best on the market and for under $150 Can. it's a sweet deal. The reason I recommend AMD over Intel is the performance and the price. Benchmarks aside, in real world applications and every day use the AMD out guns and outshines Intel 20 - 1 everytime. Ask any hardcore gamer what kind of box he runs he will most likely tell you AMD. Here are some links to check out. http://www6.tomshardware.com/mainboard/01q3/010808/via_kt266-16.html http://www4.tomshardware.com/storage/00q3/000821/index.html http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q1/010322/ GL S Macleod ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jupp, Peter" <JuppPat_private> To: <forensicsat_private> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2001 8:10 AM Subject: Forensics Lab Equipment Questions > Greetings All, > > Does anyone know a good supplier for a bench-mounted variable power supply? > > Secondly, has anyone found a universal solution for getting power to a laptop computer with no power supply? We are often asked by other investigators if we can determine the owner of recovered stolen laptops. Of course, the battery has always fully discharged and there is no power supply (disposable computing for thieves). There are so many of these coming in with no real evidenciary value (we're just looking to get them back to their rightful owners) that we don't do a proper forensic analysis, usually within 30 seconds after booting it up we can find enough clues to determine who used to own it. The problem is that we often don't have a compatible power supply. If there exists some kind of universal option, I haven't found it yet...but I'd be very interested to know how others cope with the same problem. Our collection of power supplies is slowly growing, but not fast enough. > > Thirdly, does anyone use an external CDRW drive (not for using with the forensic box, just for our laptops)? Any recommendations? We were using an older HP, it sure makes a lot of coasters. > > Finally, since we're on the subject of equipment, I have the enviable task of building a couple of forensic workstations. I have so far compiled the following list of components. If anyone has any comments on compatibility issues, or has had a particularly bad experience with anything on this list I'd appreciate knowing about it before I submit my wishlist. > > Case -- Antec SX1040B > Motherboard -- ASUS P4T Intel 850 Pentium 4 > Processor -- Pentium 4 1.5GB (comes with 128MB RDRAM) > Memory -- Extra two 64MB RIMMS for a total of 256MB > Storage -- Quantum Fireball AS 20.5GB > Storage -- Plextor 16X10X40 > Video Card -- GeForce2 MX-400 32MB > SCSI Card -- Adaptec 2940 > Audio Card -- SB Live Value > DVD Drive -- ??? (Any recommendations appreciated) > > Thanks in advance, > > > > Det. Peter Jupp > > High Tech Crime Unit > > Ottawa Police Service > > CANADA > > (613)236-1222 ext.2234 > > *E*jupppat_private > > > > > > > ----------------------------------------------------------------- > This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service. > For more information on this free incident handling, management > and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com > ----------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided by the SecurityFocus ARIS analyzer service. For more information on this free incident handling, management and tracking system please see: http://aris.securityfocus.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Aug 16 2001 - 07:33:27 PDT